Mammaries and memories

Recently the Daily Mail had 5 notable woman journalists write a letter to their own bodies. You'd think they'd have had more sense. Only one had anything pleasant to say to hers, so sounded somewhat smug. The others were hypercritical,the worst being Liz Jones,of course. She just extended her ever-present references to anorexia and self-loathing to one of those apologies that you just know isn't going to make any difference to the behaviour.
I was reminded of Victoria Wood's account of reading a magazine article encouraging her to look at herself naked and admire her positive features. She ended up repeating'You have Latin O'level' over and over again. I have Latin O'level too and three sisters-I have no need to look at mesel in the nip;I have been informed of my figure flaws years ago and the years must surely only have honed them. At any rate, there's nothing to be gained by pointing out your shortcomings;it bores or irritates people and makes them think about things they hadn't noticed. Particularly men, who are much much more tolerant than I was ever led to believe. It seems you need to be really quite deformed not to be fancied by several of them. That extremely reliable volume Heat magazine surveyed men's opinions of women's looks a couple of weeks ago. The majority disliked fake tan, hair extensions and breast implants but most excitingly, about of third of those surveyed didn't know what cellulite was. No-one must tell them, is that clear?
I might need to write a letter to my mother though,looking back at puberty.I may not have been as well-developped as Barbara Blaikie, who held bra-viewings in the toilets at breaktime in P.7 but I believe I was the last girl in my class in secondary school to get a bra. I wrote a whole diary about it, 1977-8. There was apparently nothing else important going on in my life, unless you count attempting to be promoted from the hockey Under-14 B's. In the end, I hung about for about two hours while me ma was ironing,finally blurting out a grunted demand for a 30AA. The longed-for item was white with fuchsia stars on it. We were always on about fuchsia in those days;I think because our houses were decorated almost entirely in brown.(It's not that long since my mum was forced to stop saying 'nigger brown', by the way.)This bra had hardly any elastic and therefore was deeply uncomfortable. Naturally I thought this was the reality and well worth the pain of going about like Judy Garland when they bandaged down her bosoms for The Wizard Of Oz.
I had friends with less innocent parents, who had Given Them A Book About The Facts Of Life,which I thought wonderfully enlightened, nearly bohemian, in fact. In those days you didn't say 'period' out loud. The attitude was similar to Homer Simpson's suspicious inquiry;'Is this some kinda underwear thing?' I told my mum stoutly that I knew 'everything' about sex,was believed, and turned to Graeme Cowden and his pilfered Ladybird book on Where we Came From, with the before- and after- puberty drawings in its inside covers. The rest I learned in time-honoured fashion by hearing jokes and pretending to get them, then doing 'research' with entirely unqualified people such as my best-friend-who-had-found-a-dirty-magazine-in-the-woods. Chesty Morgan was a long way from her 30 AA days, quite made you nostalgic for your vest.
I still am. Bras have turned out to be very over-rated. And we are all wearing the wrong size. This may be due to not remembering to do what the really posh bra-fitter ladies make you do, which is bend forwards and try to get your bosoms to fall into the cups as if someone was doing a Heimlich manuevre on you. Also no-one knows how to do that sum which tells you your cup size. Or it may be the hormonal hinterland we inhabit which leads you to spend more time deciding on a Twirl over a Lion Bar than you do on working out if you need a 'balcony' or a 'plunge'. Actually if it weren't for the chocolate, many of us might just plunge off the nearest balcony.